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Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (2003)
The Cat in the Hat (also known as Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat) is a 2003 American fantasy comedy film directed by Bo Welch in his directorial debut and based on Dr. Seuss’s book of the same name. Starring Mike Myers, Dakota Fanning, Spencer Breslin, Alec Baldwin and Kelly Preston, it is the second feature-length Dr. Seuss adaptation after the 2000 film How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The idea was originally conceived in 2001 with Tim Allen initially cast as the Cat, but he dropped his role due to work on The Santa Clause 2 and the role was later given to Myers. Filming took place in California for three months. While the basic plot parallels that of the book, the film filled out its 82 minutes by adding new subplots and characters significantly different from the original story similar to How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Released theatrically on November 21, 2003 in the United States, the film grossed $134 million worldwide against a budget of $109 million, but was panned by critics largely for its family-unfriendly humor and innuendos while the visual aspects were mostly praised. Following the film's release, Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel, decided not to allow any further live-action adaptations of Seuss' works to be produced, and as a result, a planned sequel based on The Cat in the Hat Comes Back was scrapped. Plot Conrad and Sally Walden live in the city of Anville with their single-mother, Joan. Joan works for neat-freak Hank Humberfloob, as a real estate agent, and is hosting an office party at her house. One day, she is called back to the office, leaving the kids with Mrs. Kwan, an elderly tired babysitter (after the previous one quit), and forbidding them to enter the living room, which is being kept pristine for the upcoming party. Joan is also dating their next-door neighbor, Larry Quinn, much to Conrad's dismay. Larry is constantly on the lookout for any mischief Conrad may be up to, as he wants nothing more than to send him away to military school, as Conrad has earned the reputation of "hot-headed trouble-maker", while his sister is characterized as "perfect and well-behaved". Once their mother leaves, Sally and Conrad meet an anthropomorphic humanoid and oversized talking cat with a red-and-white striped hat and a large red bow tie named the Cat in the Hat. The Cat wants them to learn to have fun but the children's pet fish doesn't want the Cat around when Joan is away. The Cat then leaves a trail of destruction across the house. In the process, he releases two trouble-making things, Thing 1 and Thing 2, from a crate that he explains is actually a portal to another world. The Cat tells Conrad that he only has one rule: never open the crate, then allows the Things to have fun, but they make a mess out of the house. Despite the Cat's warning, Conrad picks the lock on the crate. When the crate's lock attaches itself to the collar of the family dog, Nevins, Cat and the kids must go find him and the lock. They drive a super-powered car which Cat names it the Larry-mobile or S.L.O.W. (Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger) in search of Nevins and use Cat's magic hat. Conrad realizes that the Things always do the opposite to what they are told, and that this can be used to their advantage and has them stall Joan. Meanwhile, Larry is revealed to be an unemployed slob with dentures, and is in financial debt, though claiming that he is a successful businessman in the hopes of marrying Joan for her money. Larry sees Nevins running across the street and tracks down Joan to tell her, but Things 1 and 2 have stalled her on the road, posing as police officers. Larry goes back to the house, telling Joan to meet him there. By the time the kids and the Cat (and Larry) return to the house with the lock, a huge mess spills from the unlocked crate and enters the house, seemingly killing Larry in the process. They navigate their way through the oversized house and find the crate while cleaning up. The house is returned to its normal proportions but then immediately falls apart. The Cat confesses to the kids that he planned the whole day, including making not opening the crate his one rule as he knew Conrad could not resist. The kids angrily tell the Cat to leave the house. Conrad prepares to face the consequences when Joan comes home but Sally says she will share the blame. The Cat having overheard this happily returns to clean up the mess with a great cleaning contraption. named D.I.R.T. (Dynamic Industrial Renovating Tractormajigger) Afterwards, The Cat says goodbye and departs as Joan is arriving. Larry returns, revealing he survived when all was restored, thinking he has busted the kids, but when Joan sees the clean house (and a messy Larry), she does not believe Larry and dumps him, much to Larry's dismay. After the successful party, Joan spends quality time with her children and the film ends as the Cat and his Things walk off into the sunset. Bad Qualities #This film is mostly unfaithful to the book as almost destroys the charm and nearly killed a reputation of the original and twists it into a movie a little bit inappropriate for the target of Dr. Seuss' works. There are a lot of innuendos (for a PG-rated movie) and the film features a new character named Larry, a lazy unemployed next-door neighbor who plans to marry Joan for money and to send Conrad to military school, who wasn't even in the original book to begin with. #Awful characters and character development. Especially the conflict between Conrad and Joan. #The Cat is very much the opposite of his book counterpart. In the book, he was kind, funny, well-meaning and never was a legitimate threat. Here, he is mean, unfunny, malicious and a genuinely sadistic threat. Such is demonstrated in the scene where he pushes Larry off a cliff in the climax and when Sally and Conrad find the crate and Sally almost gets sucked up, he literally stands there and smiles. What makes it worse is that he planned everything, including remorselessly putting Sally and Conrad, two children, as well as Larry, their soon-to-be stepfather in near death experiences. #Extremely flawed character design for the Cat that looks like Pennywise the Dancing Clown from IT. As well as his minions, Thing 1 and Thing 2, which look like the Grady twins from The Shining. Both of those designs look like they belong in horror movies, not in kids films. #Wasted talents, including that of Mike Myers as the Cat, Spencer Breslin as Conrad, Dakota Fanning as Sally, Kelly Preston as Conrad and Sally's mom, Joan, and Alec Baldwin as Larry. #Spencer Breslin and Dakota Fanning hardly put even a single amount of emotion into their performances. #The film can get inappropriate for kids due to the amount adult and toilet jokes it has. Two examples are the Cat nearly swearing in one scene where he accidentally chopped part of his tail off, and the Cat showing his car in which he calls it the "'S'uper 'H'ydraulic 'I'nstantaneous 'T'ransporter" before he changed its name to "'S'uper 'L'uxurious 'O'mnidirectional 'W'hatchamajigger a.k.a. the S.L.O.W." to prevent Conrad from saying the acronym of the previous name, which is "S**t". #Shameless marketing in one scene, where the Cat uses the Universal Studios cards during the climax. #Bad graphical effects. #Instead of following the same moral from the book, the movie adds extra ones that are incredibly forced and unnecessary. #Most of the conflicts were incredibly forced. Like the harshness from Conrad and Joan as they have little to know buildup to say such harshness from either one of them. #The film has a racist Chinese stereotype with a fat, sleeping lady who just so happens to be watching a Taiwanese parliament fight. #A totally out of place cameo of Paris Hilton dancing in a club, with the Cat getting horny over her. This is another example of the bad grasp of the source material and the inappropriate content for kids found in this movie. Good Qualities # The Dr. Seuss environment looks well done along with the props. # The opening credits and logos are entirely well animated in Dr. Seuss's distinctive style, and the music played in the background is fitting and amazing. # The soundtrack is decent. # The film has a surreal atmosphere. # Mr. Humberfloob's character is actually pretty funny. # A satisfying, but somewhat heartbreaking, scene where the Cat is beaten. # Larry is somewhat tolerable in certain parts. Reception Critical response The Cat in the Hat received overwhelmingly negative reviews, getting a 10% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an average grade of D+ from critics in the interpretation of Yahoo's film website. On Metacritic, the film scored 19 out of 100 based on 37 reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike". A characteristic evaluation was that of Ty Burr, writing in the Boston Globe: "The big-screen Cat represents everything corrupt, bloated, and wrong with mainstream Hollywood movies." A number of critics also said that the MPAA should have given the film a stricter rating than "PG", due to the mature themes and multiple double entendres. The website IMDB.com gives it a rating of 3.8 out of 10. Box-office performance The film only managed to recoup $101 million of its $109 million budget domestically at the box office; however an additional $32 million from foreign countries brought the films total box office revenue to $133 million, making it a box-office disappointment. Awards and nominations The Cat in the Hat was nominated for eight Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Mike Myers), Worst Supporting Actor (Alec Baldwin), Worst Supporting Actress (Kelly Preston), Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Screen Couple (Myers and either Thing One or Thing Two), winning one for Worst Excuse for an Actual Movie (All Concept/No Content). As a result of frequent mature themes, Audrey Geisel, the widow of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel (who holds the rights to his work) declared that there are to be no more live-action movies based on the works of Dr. Seuss, arguing that the film has clearly deviated from her late husband's family-friendly work. Category:Average films Category:2000s films Category:DreamWorks films Category:Universal Studios films Category:Based on book/novel Category:Comedy films Category:Fantasy films Category:Box office bombs/disappointments